The Golden Gate Bridge was the longest span in the world from its completion in 1937 until the Verrazano Narrows Bridge was built in New York in 1964. Today, it still has the ninth-longest suspension span in the world. A few Golden Gate Bridge facts to illustrate its size:

One of the most interesting Golden Gate Bridge facts is that only eleven workers died during construction, a new safety record for the time. In the 1930s, bridge builders expected 1 fatality per $1 million in construction costs, and builders expected 35 people to die while building the Golden Gate Bridge. One of the bridge's safety innovations was a net suspended under the floor. This net saved the lives of 19 men during construction, and they are often called the members of the "Half Way to Hell Club."

Steel Facts:

Made in New Jersey, Maryland and Pennsylvania and shipped through the Panama Canal

Total weight of steel: 83,000 tons (75,293,000 kg)

Cable Facts:

Two main cables pass over the tops of the main towers and are secured in concrete anchorages at each end. Each cable is made of 27,572 strands of wire. There are 80,000 miles (129,000 km) of wire in the two main cables, and it took over six months to spin them

Cable diameter (including wrapping): 36 3/8 inches (0.92 m)

Cable length: 7,260 feet (2,332 m)

Lights:

128 lights are installed on the bridge roadway. They are 250-watt high pressure sodium lamps installed in 1972